Home is What You Make It

This picture doesn’t have much to do with this post, other than I took it at my parents’ house and it’s just super cute.
Anyway…
This has been (and still is) a pretty crazy week. We moved to a new apartment, Paul’s gone on a work trip, and I’m chillin’ at my parents’ house. By “chillin” I mean chasing a 13 month old baby around their tile-floored, stair-filled house. Don’t get me wrong, I love being here, it’s just not as relaxing as a small, baby-proofed apartment.
That being said, I have to admit that our current apartment is definitely not relaxing right now. Charlie and I left a very cluttered, box-ridden apartment on Friday, and although Paul did a lot of organizing after we left, the boxes are still there, and I’m sure the place feels like a not-so-disturbing but still-unpleasant episode of Hoarders.
Although I’m not happy about leaving our new apartment in disarray (I’ve recently begun to understand why my parents made us clean the house before leaving for vacation), I’m glad I got to take a break from moving-stress and visit the most home-like place I know right now. Mom and Dad have done a serious amount of remodeling, but it still feels like home and my brain is (a little) more at rest simply by being here.
One of my long-time foes has been home-decorating. There have been a couple apartments/houses I’ve lived in where I did an okay job of nesting, but most of my previous living spaces looked like I should have been eating Ramen every day and wearing flip-flops in the shower. Our last two apartments can be included in the Ramen category.
Hold the phone here…Aren’t I married? Don’t I have a child? I thought that a well-decorated and comfortable home just came along with marriage and children like a package deal…right?
Apparently not.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this yet, but I’m not a big fan of how our new apartment looks. We only have two windows and the carpet looks like poop. Oh, yeah. Brown, splotchy, 1986 poop.

So here’s my newest mission: strategic, well-planned decorating (and serious organization) for our new home. If I’m spending my days living and working here, I need to be pleased with my surroundings, no matter what size or shape it is.

Looking around my parents’ house has given me a few things to remember while I decorate our apartment:

1. Mom and Dad have remodeled their house to be exactly the way they want it…We may not be able paint or knock out walls, but we can definitely put forth the effort and save the money to make our apartment exactly the way we want it.
2. My parents’ house is filled with windows and light and I just love it…Whatever we do in here, it’s got to make the place feel lighter.
3. In the future, I would love to have a house as big as Mom and Dad’s…but after this last week of chasing Charlie around it, I’m actually pretty thankful for our 650 square feet.
4. And finally, even if for some reason I never get anything on the walls, Paul and Charlie are better than any decorations, so I’m already way ahead.

So here’s to simplification, beautification, and organization! If you guys have any awesome resources or apartment decorating ideas, I would be thrilled to know about them!